Article excerpt

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Alumni who long pushed Penn State
University's board for a public vote up or down on the
controversial Freeh report - a document they say unfairly tarred
their school - finally got their wish Tuesday, if not the outcome
they wanted.

After heated debate during which several audience members were
ejected from the board meeting, trustees voted 17-9 against a
resolution backed by alumni-elected trustees. It would have
reopened the Freeh investigation, which in July 2012 concluded that
top university leaders concealed information related to child
sexual assaults by former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

It's unclear what comes next. But Tuesday's special meeting at
the Nittany Lion Inn did little to heal deep board divisions that
remain nearly three years after Sandusky was charged and later
convicted of assaults against young boys, some on campus.

Emotions among trustees flared during the nearly hourlong debate,
as they did in the crowd of 80 onlookers. Board chairman Keith
Masser vowed to keep order and one woman, who subsequently tried to
speak from the audience, was escorted from her seat by campus
officers.

Several others were removed as they criticized the board,
including one who shouted an obscenity before leaving and said "I'm
proud to be kicked out!"

The school-commissioned report by the law firm of former FBI
director Louis Freeh became a basis for landmark sanctions by the
NCAA - including $60 million in fines, a postseason bowl ban and
loss of football scholarships.

University trustees, without ever voting to accept the report,
used it as a road map for implementing reforms that they said led
to early lifting of some of those sanctions.

But critics contend the report was incomplete, inaccurate and
part of a rush to judgment by a university so desperate to extract
itself from scandal that it scapegoated campus leaders, including
the late legendary football coach Joe Paterno, whom alumni say was
wrongly accused in the report of concealing key facts related to
Sandusky's crimes. In doing so, say alumni, the report served to
damage the university's reputation. …